eternaldoctorwho writes: The Register reports on scientists at IBM Research creating a movie on the smallest scale ever. Moving atoms around one-by-one, the movie "A Boy and His Atom" consists of 242 frames and lasts under 100 seconds. The company is researching atomic scale storage, and has released the movie as "a fun way to share the atomic-scale world while opening up a dialogue with students and others on the new frontiers of math and science." The jury is still out on whether IMDB will list the short film or not.

eternaldoctorwho writes: Marine biologists have long known that the eyes of a giant squid are proportionately among the biggest in the animal kingdom. A hypothesis recently published in Current Biology theorizes that the squids need such large ocular organs to spot their largest natural predator — the sperm whale. The Register reports the full story on how the beasties can spot their enemies at such murky depths.

eternaldoctorwho writes: New evidence has been uncovered that suggests mammals were widely successful at least 20 million years before dinosaurs went extinct in the K-T asteroid impact. A recently published study in Nature by paleontologist Greg Wilson of the University of Washington reveals that multituberculates (a class of mice-like mammals named for the shape of their teeth) became abundant at the same time as the rise of flowering plants. So what did finally wipe out this now-extinct class of "multis"? University of Chicago paleontologist Zhe-Xi Luo has the answer, "You could say multituberculates were a good match against the dinosaurs, but they were no match for the rodents."

eternaldoctorwho writes: Research has been underway to produce a coffee bean plant that naturally has no or little caffeine content. Now, it looks like that might become a reality in the near future: Paulo Mazzafera of the University of Campinas in Brazi has come closer than ever with a strain containing "only 2% of normal caffeine levels". Coffee anyone?